Thursday, March 3, 2011

There's Something About Charlie



In case you have been hiding under a rock the past two weeks or so, then you have missed the awesomeness that has been Charlie Sheen.  The above picture captures Charlie in an unflattering manner, but at this current time (8:39 P.M, March 3, 2011) I doubt that picture is high on Charlie's priority list.  Before I get to much further let me post a few quick links for you fine people sitting at your computer regarding Uncle Charlie and some of his finer moments in the past couple of weeks 




If you took the time to look at some of those several great comedic (whether intentional or not) quotes stood out that Charlie said such as the tiger's blood, I am a warlock, I'm not bi-polar I'm bi-winning, etc. 
However, the one thing that no one can deny (unless you have been living under said rock) is that Charlie Sheen is everywhere right now, there is a 75% chance he is behind you as you read this sentence.  He has taken the media by storm and dominated in a fashion that is unfathomable. 

 March 1st, 2011 will be a day that will live in Twitter infamy.  That was the day Charlie joined the social network, within 24 hours he had over 1 million followers, as of right now its quickly approaching the 1.5 million mark.  Will this number drop off anytime soon, probably not as long as Charles keeps on ranting, people want to see what the next crazy, outrageous comment he may say and they want it in a way where they can have first hand access to it.  That is what his Twitter account allows people.  Even right now #tigerblood is the most used thing that is trending on Twitter.  

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing man that he never existed.  The greatest trick Charlie Sheen may be pulling before our very eyes is convincing everyone he is crazy while he really is "from some other terrestrial plane."  His statement today is that he is using Twitter as a way to make extra cash (the avg price for a celebrity tweet is $10k) which is plausible but I don't believe that is his only reason for doing so, nor should you.  TMZ did report that the picture of Charlie holding a jug of chocolate milk did make that company's sales go through the roof and the owner of the company stated Charlie acted on his own showing the milk (though he offered to pay him in chocolate milk next time he stopped by the farm). Coincidence? I highly doubt it.  Back to the point though, Charlie is on Twitter for one thing, to promote the Charlie Sheen brand, and its working.  

After my Tech 621 Class where the possibility of researching online self image and identity and tying this into Charlie Sheen became available, I feel that this is a topic that would be not only fun, but very informative.  Giving the ability of the software that is at our fingertips in class, another nod to you Radian 6, it would be interesting to just see how much Charlie Sheen has influenced the online media in the past week through both primary (Uncle Charlie) actions as well as secondary actions (how products he hocks including the chocolate milk).  

6 comments:

  1. This is a very thoughtful post, and yes, there are some interesting research ideas/possibilities here. Did you see my tweet with sources about image restoration theory? That would be the theoretical framework for this.

    I just love seeing how some of you students in the class take an idea and make it into something interesting or a research topic... while keeping it funny. I'm jealous, wish I could do that!

    ReplyDelete
  2. By far this topic (CHARLIE SHEEN) is my absolute favorite. its the reason I've been uh following "a.k.a Stalking" some of my favorie celebrities lol. From the start i honestly knew he wasnt joining twitter for any reason BUT to promote himself. he's the talk of town or i should say the talk of the globe. i give him props for what he did. he went it knowing exactly what he wanted to get out of it and he got it. 1.5 million followers within what? less than 2 days? he's smart. he knew social media is the way to go and what is the one site many people are on that's simple enough for him to use? TWITTER . Facebook would be a bit more complex i feel :) one thing he says about his product BAMMMM i don't even know how many of his followers with jump on their feet to go buy it from the closest store. He's a genius. i came across an article that i just scanned a bit ago and it talks about how twitter is used to advertise, search (using the links everyone posts) and for news and opinions. i can tell you this, i'm probably going to keep my twitter account for a very very long time. i'll even do what Uncle Charlie is doing, use Twitter to my advantage. the word of the mouth used to make a company well known. the word of tweets will put me out their lol. it's a new revolution im telling you... I-marketing, social media... its crazy

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dr. V. years and years of self depreciating humor has led to writings such as this blog, unfortunately I didn't catch your tweet (NNNOOOOO)

    Israa, I read that blog that you linked, it stated that he easily blew past the Guinness record for fastest to 1million followers. The good thing about choosing Twitter over Facebook is there is less obstacles, someone can see his tweets and not be a member of Twitter, but wouldn't be able to see status updates if he was on Facebook, again a brilliant move like you pointed out!

    ReplyDelete
  4. In this time, it is innovative to use the tools you have at your disposal to market yourself. Some say not all publicity is good publicity...I might tend to beg to differ on certain occasions, but the underlining theme here is that CHARLIE IS WINNING! He is brilliant to use social media to market himself and even more brilliant to use the media(news) to broadcast his evident negative drug screen(including blood screen). This is picturesque of a rebel and independent thinker who hold no boundaries to who and what he wants to say. -LOVE IT!!!#1- Freedom of Speech....and if you don't like it, who care...I'm still winning!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Did you catch http://www.ustream.tv/charliesheen when I tweeted it? I'm not sure why he wants the whole world to see him at all times. I don't believe he realizes how messed up he is or how crazy he comes across. I do think it's awesome how he just doesn't care about what other people think, and he is a pretty successful guy, but he needs to learn some humility. I've been able to laugh at everything he's put out recently, but I'm not sure how much longer I can follow it. His life is a complete disaster atm and he's so egomaniacal that I'm not sure anyone will be able to get through to him. I wonder what his dad and brother (Emelio Estevez, if anyone didn't know) think about his situation.

    ReplyDelete
  6. His dad and brother have said they have been trying to get him into treatment but he refuses. On the ustream link I did see it and I watched all of it. It went from 100k viewers in 2 minutes to 117k peak in 10 down to 85k by the time it finished.

    ReplyDelete